At Monday’s (June 9) 2025 BET Awards, Snoop Dogg stood at the mountaintop while accepting the Ultimate Icon Award with his wife and Dr. Dre at his side while looking out into a room of some of the biggest names in R&B and hip-hop.
Coming toward the end of the show, Dre kicked off the Snoop tribute by giving a speech that both praised his frequent collaborator — whom he called “one of the most prolific artists in hip-hop” — and lovingly joked at his expense. “Every time I turn on the TV, he’s trying to sell something,” the producer quipped as Snoop laughed in the audience.
When he got onstage to accept the prize, Snoop squeezed in a retaliatory dig at Dre, thanking him in jest “for allowing me the opportunity to ghostwrite for you on ‘Deep Cover’ and ‘Nuthin’ But a G Thang’” — references to some of the duo’s earliest collaborations.
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Most of the rest of Snoop’s speech — for which he was joined onstage by wife Shante Broadus, to whom he’s been married since 1997 — struck a more serious tone. Shouting out his teachers, all of the “MCs I battled along the way,” his family at Death Row Records and former groupmates Warren G and the late Nate Dogg, Snoop also praised his children and 10 grandchildren — “my greatest inspiration,” as he called them — as well as his “beautiful wife.”
“This is why I’m so rock solid,” he said, referring to Broadus. “This is why I’m able to deal with all the things I’m able to deal with — when I’ve got God in my life and I’ve got a queen in my life. She’s always been my everything.”
Before switching gears to perform some of his most iconic songs, the rapper ended his remarks by sharing his ideas of what the title of Icon means to him. “The work speaks for you,” he told the crowd gathered at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. “Hip-hop, it gave me a voice. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a way out and a way in … Being an icon, it ain’t about fame. It’s about legacy. It’s about what you build, what you leave behind and who you lift up along the way.”
Snoop was one of four artists presented with an Ultimate Icon Award on Monday night. Mariah Carey, Jamie Foxx and Kirk Franklin — each of whom the Doggfather personally shouted out during his speech — also took home the same honor, making for emotional moments throughout the four-hour ceremony.
After a quick commercial break, Snoop sealed his Ultimate Icon status by delivering a high-energy medley of his hits, including “Unsung Heroes,” Billboard Hot 100 topper “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang.” A few familiar faces also joined him, his backup dancers and his accompanying orchestra on stage, with Charlie Wilson helping to perform The Gap Band’s “Outstanding,” and Warren G and Kurupt assisting in closing out the medley with “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None).”
The BET Awards were hosted this year by Kevin Hart and honored some of 2025’s biggest feats in pop culture. Kendrick Lamar — who took home album of the year for GNX along with four other prizes — was the top nominee, earning 10 nods.
The presentation of Ultimate Icon to Snoop follows more than 30 years of climbing his way up the hip-hop ranks, notching 45 entries on the Hot 100 and three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 in the process. He’s also paved the way as a media personality and as the now-owner of his first label home, Death Row Records, which he acquired in 2022.
Snoop’s latest album, Iz It a Crime?, dropped May 15.
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